Dennis Minsky on Provincetown
by Steve Desroches
It’s an impossibly gorgeous day, that kind of September morning that elicits sighs and smiles. A clear sky and bright sun make the water of Provincetown Harbor sparkle as if speckled with crystals. Cormorants take a dive into the water, creating sporadic splashes as a curious seal pokes its head above the calm waters, taking a survey of its surroundings, and then slides back into the shallow surf its cruising either for food, safety from the Great Whites, or both. On the beach in front of the Cannery Wharf Park, easels dot the landscape as a plein-air class creates a scene that has been a familiar sight in Provincetown for over a century. Each artist uses brush and paint as well as discipline, imagination, and talent to interpret this spectacular vista and put it on canvas.
Writer Dennis Minsky smiles at all of it and lets out a chuckle. It’s all too beautiful to not punctuate any conversation with frequent reminders. And he empathizes with the work before the artists on the beach as he faces a similar conundrum each week when he writes his column, The Year-Rounder for the Provincetown Independent, commenting on nature, community, and this fabulously complex and compelling spit of land called Provincetown. Artists have a blank slate, while Minsky faces the blinking cursor. Over the course of Provincetown’s history tens of thousands have attempted to document all that is this wild outpost of a town in paintings, photographs, books, poems, songs, plays, film and television, and more. For a tiny town it may seem an oversized record of Provincetown, but considering all that has happened here mixed with its natural beauty, it’s clear to see why it is so often a muse. For almost a decade now Minsky has added his viewpoints and observations adding to the canon of Provincetown.
“I have let go of any greater ambition with however much time I have left,” says Minsky. “I can’t say I try to capture Provincetown, but to depict it. Little pieces of it. Nobody has ever captured this place. All anyone can do is to add one more brush stroke.”
Minsky’s contributions to this ever-expanding tableau have been assembled into a new book titled Peculiar and Superior: A Year-Rounder in Provincetown, a work featuring a collection of his columns. The title comes from Henry David Thoreau’s 1865 book Cape Cod in which he wrote, “We did not care to see those features of the Cape in which it is inferior or merely equal to the mainland, but only those in which it is peculiar or superior.” Thoreau visited Provincetown three times between 1849 and 1855, and only for a week each stop. Minsky includes Thoreau in those that have merely added to the understanding of Provincetown, though, like Michael Cunningham with Land’s End: A Walk in Provincetown and Mary Heaton Vorse’s Time and the Town: A Provincetown Chronicle, his words continue to resonate all these years later. How does a writer utilize the feeling of a place, and more specifically this place? That’s the topic at hand that Minsky, along with fellow Cape Cod writers Cynthia Blakeley and Judith Stiles, will tackle when they appear on the panel Sense of Place: Cape Cod Writers, moderated by Ira Wood, this Saturday as part of the Provincetown Book Festival at the Provincetown Public Library.
Minsky hitchhiked to Provincetown in 1968 and never left, with a few exceptions here and there. He met his wife Deborah and raised a family. He’s worked in restaurants and as a wildlife biologist for the Cape Cod National Seashore, a guide on Art’s Dune Tours, and as a naturalist on the Dolphin Fleet whale watches while also serving on the town’s Open Space Committee and the Provincetown Conversation Trust. His knowledge of Provincetown’s natural world is perhaps what he himself is best known for, but he bristles at being called a nature writer. He doesn’t see a distinction between the natural world and that of humans. It’s all part and parcel, even though he acknowledges those who visit and never leave downtown completely unaware of just how far out into the North Atlantic tiny Provincetown is. He’s more interested in exactly what Thoreau was, that which makes this place unique and fighting off the forces of suburbanization, bland corporate culture, and gentrification that could turn Provincetown into a Potemkin village.
“That’s what I write against,” says Minsky. “It’s resisting the generic taking over the place.”
In Peculiar and Superior Minsky utilizes his long history in town to put today into context, something that is always necessary, but especially so in a town where real estate lingo and tourism content can often dominate. He offers a slice of real life that doesn’t seek to sell anything, just explain, and at that it’s just from his personal perch so it’s not in the tone of the definitive, but rather the musings of a curious mind who finds Provincetown a continual source of fascination. Sitting at Cannery Wharf Park, a reminder of the nature of constant change, as the space used to be a parking lot, a wharf, and of course a cannery, Minsky does dabble with thoughts of literary immortality or at least claiming a spot in the historical record. It’s too beautiful of a day to not let your mind wander in such a fashion.
“If I could just be added to the pantheon of those that tried to get a hold on Provincetown, I’ll die happy,” says Minsky. “Or I’ll be dead happy.”
Dennis Minsky will be part of the panel Sense of Place: Cape Cod Writers along with Cynthia Blakeley and Judith Stiles as part of the Provincetown Book Festival on Saturday, September 20 at 10:30 a.m. at the Provincetown Public Library, 356 Commercial St. The event is free. www.provincetownlibrary.org Minsky’s book Peculiar and Superior: A Year-Rounder in Provincetown is available at book shops in Provincetown and other select local businesses.
